


Cages+Lessons

by JustAnotherWriter (N1ghtshade)



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Army, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Whump, sandbox
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 17:49:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18761377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/N1ghtshade/pseuds/JustAnotherWriter
Summary: It’s not Jack’s first time getting captured and tortured. Far from it. But it is Mac’s.





	Cages+Lessons

Jack blames himself.  _ I’m his overwatch. It was my job to make sure that the area was clear. And I let us walk into an ambush. _

But blame won’t do anyone any good. Least of all the kid in the next cell, who’s hunched over himself, shivering in a way Jack knows has nothing to do with the temperature of their prison, because it’s hellishly hot in here. 

Mac is scared. Which is completely understandable, given that they just got captured by a group of terrorists who seem pretty unclear as to what they want other than to make the enemy suffer. 

Jack knows Mac’s only letting himself freak out because he thinks Jack’s still unconscious.  _ I wish I was. _ His head aches, he knows he’s already dehydrated and that’s making it worse, and he’s sure that pretty soon this is only going to get worse. 

He clears his throat softly, just enough to let the kid know he’s back in the land of the living. Mac jumps to his feet, dashing over to the bars separating him from Jack. With his wide, scared eyes and hair stuck to his forehead with sweat, he looks a lot younger than the twenty-one year old he is. _ He shouldn’t be here. _

He’s already forced down the shuddering and panic, although Jack knows him well enough to see the fear in his face and posture. “Jack! You’re awake!”

“Yeah, genius.” Jack rolls sideways, feeling the stickiness of blood at his hairline and down his arm.  _ At least the gunshot wound bled out enough to clean it out some. _ He doubts these guys are going to hand him a bottle of peroxide and bandages anytime soon. Thankfully Mac looks uninjured, aside from some rope burns on his wrists. 

Mac glances toward the door when footsteps walk by, and Jack doesn’t miss the flinch.  _ It’s his first time. _ And Jack wants to spare the kid the rookie mistakes he made. And as much pain as possible. 

“When they come through that door, you let me do the talking, okay?”

Mac shakes his head. “You got shot. It’s better if they come for me.” But Jack can see the EOD tech’s normally rock steady hands shaking. 

“Listen, Mac, I’ve been through this before. The first thing you wanna do is stop acting like a tough guy, okay?”

Mac blinks. “What?”

“They’re tryin’ to break us. And the more you make them work for it, the more they’re  _ gonna  _ work for it. I know it’s hard to accept, but sometimes you gotta swallow your pride if you wanna live. Don’t tell them anything, but...don’t go convincing them you’re fine, okay?”

“Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to do? With a bullet in your shoulder.”  _ Damn kid has a point. _ But Jack is expendable. Mac is not. 

“That’s different. I have two decades of advanced interrogation resistance training.”

“I trained before we came over.” Mac sounds a little less sure, though.

“Yeah, well, they try. But there’s no substitute for the real thing.” Jack’s learned through brutal experience how to survive heatstroke, waterboarding, infected wounds, and more. “Listen, just try not to get yourself torn to pieces before the cavalry shows up, okay?” 

“If they’re even coming.” Jack shakes his head. The kid never thinks anyone should go out of their way to save him. Not Jack, not the people who are probably even now on their way to get them out of this hellhole. 

“They’re coming. As soon as we don’t report in they’ll be on their way.” Jack has no idea how long it’s going to take to find them though. He was unconscious until he woke up in this stifling box half an hour ago. Which reminds him. These guys won’t need to do anything other than leave them here a few days, if they don’t want to get their hands dirty. He can see the sweat running off Mac’s face, even though their captors took their gear and their jackets. He and Mac have only their pants and t-shirts left, not even shoes. 

“Try not to move around too much. You can’t afford to lose a lot of water, so try not to sweat as much as possible. Whenever you get a chance to take a drink, do it, even if you don’t feel thirsty. Dehydration’s tricky like that. You wait till you’re thirsty and it’s already too late.” He frowns. “And your body needs salt, too, so if they aren’t feeding us, you’ll have to try to replace it from your own sweat okay?” Mac nods. Jack knows Carl’s Jr.’s a weird genius when it comes to all kinds of random facts, he might already have known that. 

And then someone opens the door and Jack sits up straighter. “Hey, who do I complain to about the air conditioning in this joint?” He snarks. He’s rewarded by having his cell door opened and being dragged out into the hall, then punched in the stomach until he’s hunched over, gasping for breath.  

Someone shouts, and Jack doesn’t understand what they’re yelling. It might be because it’s a dialect of Farsi he’s not familiar with, or it might just be the ringing in his ears from the pain. And then they’re dragging him down the hallway, and he cringes, because behind him he can hear the click of a door lock.  _ Damn it.  _ He was hoping to distract them from the kid. 

* * *

These guys aren’t playing, but Jack can take the punishment. At this point, a few rounds as a human punching bag barely fazes him. Waterboarding brings back some unpleasant memories of Bolivia, but it’s been long enough since then that he can force those down and out of the way and concentrate on not breathing in the filthy water running over his face. But it is water, and he swallows what he can manage without choking in between sessions.  _ I’d rather not drink it, but if the choice is between this and dying of dehydration… _

The cattle prod is something he’s never exactly going to get used to, but he also grew up around horses and bulls and a stinger of an electric fence. He has a scarily high threshold of pain when it comes to this kind of thing.  _ My crazy cousin George and I used to dare each other to hold onto the fence as long as we could. _ He just pretends he’s gonna win the dare this time. 

What bothers him is what they might be doing to Mac. He doesn’t want to imagine Mac thrashing against a wet cloth over his face, clenching his teeth against screams as the men slash cuts in his skin or drive a cattle prod into his side. 

The men never ask him anything, but he sees the blinking of a camera light in the corner. He’s fairly certain this is some sort of propaganda thing. Which terrifies him. These men don’t want any information. They want Mac and Jack to suffer, and they probably want to kill them. 

He’s finally flung back into his cell, and the first thing he looks for is Mac. The kid’s not there.  _ God, no, please, they can’t have killed him already. _

Jack leans against the wall of his cell, cataloging his injuries. It’s not pleasant, but it’s also not the worst shape he’s been in.  _ Not half as bad as Myanmar. _ Then the door opens, and two of the men step in, dragging a body between them. Jack gasps. Mac barely even looks like he’s breathing. 

The men fling him onto the floor into his cell and walk away. They don’t even look back.

Jack rushes to that side of his cell and kneels down on the floor, watching until Mac’s chest moves with a desperate, bubbling inhale. The kid rolls to his side and coughs, then shudders. His shirt is torn up, and Jack can see dark purple through the tears along his ribs.  

“What did they do to you?” It’s half genuine need to know, and half just a desperate cry of anguish at seeing Mac bruised, bloody, and battered on the floor of his cell.

Mac groans. “I’m okay.”  _ Damn it, kid, the last thing I need is you lying to me. _

“Kiddo, I can’t tell you what to do if I don’t know what they did.” Not that there is much they can do for anything that happens to him. 

“Beat me up a lot. Think they broke my collarbone, and my ankle, and some ribs maybe. And they...uh...waterboarded me. A lot.” Jack could tell that already, he could hear the choked bubbling in the kid’s breathing and his voice. 

“Okay. I know it’s gonna hurt your ribs like hell, but you cough and don’t stop till you get that water outta your lungs, okay?” Mac nods slightly. “Trust me, you don’t wanna get pneumonia from it.” 

Mac nods, and Jack listens helplessly to the ragged, pained sounds. When it’s over the kid sounds like he’s breathing a little easier. Not much, but they’ll just have to accept it. Jack sighs and reaches through the bars, because of where the kid’s lying he can just barely touch his shoulder. 

“Hey, it’s gonna be alright. We’re gonna get outta this, okay?”

Jack leans as far forward as he can, resting his hand on Mac’s shoulder more strongly. The kid gasps and flinches away. And then Jack sees what he couldn’t, before in the dim light. Mac’s tan t-shirt is soaked in blood from the shoulders to his waist. He didn’t notice the smell of the blood, probably because his own nose is broken and clogged with it. 

_ Oh kiddo. _ Jack chokes back an angry yell, it won’t do anyone any good. Neither will the tears running down his cheeks, but he can’t stop those. “Mac, did they whip you?” He nods, still shuddering from pain. “Okay, I know this is gonna hurt like hell but you gotta get that shirt off them. Or it’s gonna stick.” Jack’s been on the wrong end of a whip a few times himself.  _ Hey, you don’t get to be county whip cracking champ without hitting yourself a few times. Or more than a few. _ He’s got several lasting scars, none Indiana Jones style, but there’s a nice straight one on his left shoulder that’s kind of fun to show off. “Come over here, I can help you.”

Mac scoots slowly across the floor until he’s up against the bars, and Jack begins to lift the shirt up. Mac tries to raise his arms, then flinches. 

“Wait, kiddo, I got a better idea.” Jack gets a grip on the edge of the fabric and pulls until he hears it tear. He rips the cloth away and then has to choke back another round of useless curses when he sees Mac’s back. 

It’s not as bad as it could have been. He saw the pictures of guys when he was taking Enhanced Interrogation Resistance in the CIA. Some of them didn’t even have skin left, just raw gashes that went down to bone. It looks like Mac probably has about twenty lashes across his back. But they’re deep and most of them are still bleeding.  _ Damn it. _ Mac’s already dehydrated, he can’t afford to be losing blood like this. Jack sighs. There’s nothing he can do about that right now. 

The door opens again, and Jack shudders, but it’s just one man, who carries in two small battered tin cups of water and a couple small, hard pieces of flatbread. He pushes one each through the bars of both their cells and then walks away. 

Jack pushes his own cup through to Mac. “Here, kiddo. Drink up.”

“That’s yours,” Mac insists, breaking off with a harsh cough.

“Yeah, but I’m not the one leaking fluids.” Jack shakes his head. “Besides, they gave me plenty of water earlier. Just didn’t know I was gonna use it to my advantage.” Truth be told, he is thirsty, and hot, but Mac needs that water much more than he does. “Just drink it, Mac.”

The kid finally does, and Jack notices that he’s careful not to spill a single drop, and he licks his lips several times when he’s done, catching any last moisture he can. He glances at the tin cup and then at the door, and Jack can see the wheels in his head turning. He’s mumbling to himself and fiddling with a zipper on his cargo pants.  _ I watched the kid disarm a bomb with a gum wrapper and a phone battery. Maybe he can break us outta here with a mug and a zipper.  _

Jack doesn’t eat. The hard, dry bread would soak up the water in his body faster, and when he licks it he doesn’t taste enough salt to make it worth the extra water loss. He remembers just in time to warn Mac not to eat either. Instead, he picks up the small piece of bread, flipping it over and over between his fingers for lack of something to do, while he waits for Mac to come up with a plan. The kid’s unbending another of his neverending paperclips, and Jack wonders what his plan is. The bars around the lock section of the door are too small to stick a hand through, and the lock itself is covered from the back with a solid plate of metal. 

“Man, I wish this was a nice juicy hamburger,” Jack grins. “I’d kill to be eating at an actual Carl’s Jr.’s right now.” Mac chuckles weakly, but it’s something. He’s learned Mac thinks better when he has Jack talking his ear off, whether it’s over comms or in person. “So, hamburger kid, can you actually cook hamburgers?”

“Can’t cook anything,” Mac mumbles. “Bozer says I could burn water.”  _ Right. Bozer. The roommate back home.  _ The one who sends Mac packages full of slightly broken but still incredibly delicious cookies.  _ Only person the kid ever gets anything from.  _ His family never sends anything. And from what Jack’s gathered, the kid has no family left. 

“Well, I can make a mean pot of chili, but that’s about the extent of my own skills.” Jack chuckles. “Anything in a pot, great. Baking never goes well.” It never turns out like Momma’s. 

Mac sits up suddenly, then gasps, clearly he forgot about his back. He’s got the wire bent into an odd shape, and Jack has no idea what he’s planning on doing. 

And then the door opens, and Mac hastily palms the dismantled paperclip. Four men walk in, followed by the one who brought them their food earlier. Jack cringes as both the cells are opened up, and he and Mac are dragged out. When the men yank him away down the hall, the last thing he notices is the blood dripping between Mac’s fingers where the wire cuts into his palm. 

* * *

Jack wakes up back in his cell. He doesn’t really remember much from the last session, maybe because when they started punching him they aggravated the already forming concussion. He thinks the cattle prod was back, and the cuts on his arms and legs look like they came from a serrated knife.

But nothing hurts as bad as looking over into the other cell. 

Mac is cradling his right arm, shaking. Both bones in his forearm are clearly snapped. Jack wonders if someone found the paperclip in his hand and punished him for that. He’s panting, shivering, and Jack knows the signs of someone going into shock when he sees it. The pain must be overwhelming. Mac’s face is a sickening shade of green, and if he throws up, he’ll lose more water he can’t afford to. 

“Hey, calm down, kiddo, it’s okay.” Jack can just reach Mac’s arm, and despite the pain of pulling on the new cuts and bruises, he rubs soothing circles on it gently. Mac seems to calm, just a little. “I know it hurts, really really bad, but you can’t get sick, okay?” Mac nods, just a tiny bit. “See if you can lie down, just take some deep breaths, alright?”

Mac does, lying on his side slightly to avoid making his back worse, and eventually his agonized, shuddery panting slows. Jack can feel soft tremors wracking through him. The cells are cold now, it must be night. He pulls his own shirt off and shoves it through the bars to Mac. 

“Here, cover up with this.” Being in shock is going to make Mac’s body struggle to regulate its own temperature even more than usual. Mac tugs at the shirt rather uselessly with his one good arm, then shifts a little closer so that Jack can reach through and cover him. The shirt isn’t that great, it’s still slightly damp from the last waterboarding and it’s pretty thin, but it’s better than nothing. 

Jack lays down as close to the bars as he can, and helps Mac slowly push himself across the floor closer. Eventually, they’re laying chest to chest, with the bars between them. Mac’s head is tucked in, it would be under Jack’s chin if he were actually able to be next to him, and Jack can’t help but think of his first puppy, the little cattle dog that was scared of thunderstorms and would come jumping up into his bed, curling into him the way Mac is doing now. 

He falls asleep listening to Mac’s ragged breathing against his chest.

* * *

Jack’s rudely awakened by the door slamming open and footsteps marching up to his door. He quickly rolls away from Mac, but it’s too late. He’s still tired, and lethargic from dehydration, and he blames that on why he doesn’t move fast enough to avoid the boot coming down on his knee. The pain that sears down to his heel and up to his hip is a definite dislocation. He’s dragged to his feet, _ well, foot _ , and hauled off down the hall. Mac still seems barely coherent, and Jack is terrified for him.

Clearly, these guys aren’t happy that Jack’s been taking care of his fellow prisoner. This time, he’s the one facing the wrong end of a whip. Each strike feels like someone smashed a hot poker down on his back. One strike clips the side of his cheek, and he feels blood trickling down.  _ Wonder what Mac did to make them think he deserved that from the start.  _ Probably tried to escape. 

His knee protests when they start pulling him back down the hallway to his cell. Every jounce of his foot over the uneven floor sends a shock of pain through the whole leg. And his back feels like it’s on fire.  _ So much for being the one who could afford not to need extra fluids. _

He groans when he’s flung into his cell, but automatically turns his head to look for Mac. The kid’s not there.  _ No, no, no. _ He hopes they didn’t decide to separate them, or that Mac’s too much of a liability and kill him outright.  _ We don’t even know what they want. Why are they doing this? _ He’s afraid he already knows the reason. They’re angry and they want to make soldiers like him and Mac suffer. 

He must pass out at some point, because when he wakes up the cell door next to him is clanging shut. Mac is huddled inside, in the middle of the room, and Jack flinches when he hears the sound coming from him. The kid’s shaking, sobbing. Jack shudders. _ What did they do to break him that badly? _ Mac has been whipped, electrocuted, waterboarded, and had multiple bones broken. None of that has reduced him to this. 

“Mac?” He’s almost afraid to ask.  _ What if it’s more horrible than I ever want to imagine? _

“They h-had to b-bring me back.” He’s choking on tears as much as the water in his lungs. “They killed me, Jack. And then they brought me back.”  _ Oh damn _ . Jack remembers his first time too.  _ It’s an unreal feeling. Knowing you were almost gone forever. _ His was electrocution, a stopped heart, but he’s been drowned too. 

“Hey, it’s okay, it’s gonna be okay.”  _ Stop lying to him. You both are going to die here before anyone comes for you. _ Jack pushes that bitter thought away. He’s going to do whatever it takes to keep Mac alive. 

“N-no, I  _ died, _ Jack,” Mac sobs. “I…” His voice trails off, his shoulders shaking. 

“Yeah, and you cheated it. You’re stronger than you think, Mac.” Jack aches to hold him but Mac is too far away and it doesn’t look like he’s planning on moving any time soon. “We’re gonna get out of here. It’s gonna be okay.” 

“It’s a ransom,” Mac gasps out, and Jack frowns at the abrupt change of pace. “They th-thought I was unconscious, and one of them was t-talking into the camera in the corner. They want our troops to pull out of three locations in the north.”

Jack remembers, vaguely, hearing a lot of the guys at the base talking about a big campaign to round up an emerging terror cell.  _ Guess this is them. _

“If they don’t comply in the next three days, they’re going to execute us.”

* * *

Jack wakes up sobbing, gasping, from a nightmare where he’s holding the kid’s cold, wet, still body in his arms, pleading, screaming for Mac to come back.  _ If they had killed him, they might as well have killed me too. _

He shivers, then gasps as the movement tugs at his back. He knows the cuts aren’t terrible, but they’re not clean. He’s starting to feel feverish, and he can’t tell if it’s all dehydration or infection as well. He closes his eyes, hoping for at least a few more hours of oblivion, although he’s afraid all it will be is more dreams. But he’s startled awake by a soft sound. 

Mac is crying in his sleep. 

“Please, stop.” He gasps, holding up his one good hand as if he’s trying to protect himself from the monsters in his fever dreams.  _ It’s not fair, they’ve tortured him enough, and now they’re not even here and he still sees them. _

“No, I won’t do it again. I promise.” Jack blinks. That doesn’t sound like anything that happened in an interrogation room. “I’m sorry, Dad.” His voice breaks. “I promise, I won’t touch anything. I won’t.” 

_ Oh hell no. _ Jack can’t say this is the first time he’s worked with someone who comes from a bad family past, but it always tears his heart apart when torture triggers flashbacks to childhood.  _ Makes me sick that some parents are as terrible as any drug lord or terrorist.  _

“Please, you don’t have to, I promise I know better.” Mac flinches again. “I won’t do it anymore.” 

“Mac? Kiddo, wake up, it’s alright.”  _ It’s so far from alright it’s laughable. _ But Mac is thrashing and fighting an invisible enemy, and he’s just going to make everything worse. “Mac, wake up.”

He feels utterly helpless, unable to reach out and comfort the kid, but honestly, touching him right now probably wouldn’t be a great idea. So he sticks to talking, soft and quiet, the way he would calm a skittish horse.

“It’s okay, you’re not there, he can’t hurt you.”  _ No, you’re in a damn terrorist compound and THEY can hurt you. _ “Please, wake up.”  _ To what? More of this hell? _

Mac’s wide blue eyes finally blink open, hazy and fever-bright. “J-jack?”

“Yeah, kiddo. It’s alright. You were just havin’ a real bad dream.” 

Mac nods. He takes a shaky breath, then coughs violently. Jack wants to cry watching the tears run down the kid’s face. Mac shivers, curling up as much as he can with his ruined back. “It felt like him all over again.” Jack feels a surge of helpless hot anger.  _ If I ever lay my hands on that son of a bitch... _

“He’d hit me with a belt,” Mac says, sniffling. “Never enough to really draw blood, but it...it felt like that whip.” Jack can feel tears running down to sting in the lash and cuts on his face. The kid’s voice is wobbly, all over the place, and Jack is sure he’s just so feverish he’s blurting this out unknowingly.  _ He may not even remember this after it’s all over. _ Mac doesn’t strike Jack as the type to willingly reveal those painful pieces of his past to a guy he’s only known for a hundred and fifty-eight days. 

“Mac, I’m not gonna hurt you. And I’m not gonna let him hurt you either.” He wants to promise that he’s not going to let anyone hurt Mac, ever again, but he can’t.  _ I want to take all the pain he’s ever suffered in his life, and all of it that he ever will, but I can’t. _ He wouldn’t care if he spent the rest of his life in debilitating pain. But he can’t bear the thought of Mac suffering, ever. He leans his head against the bars, humming softly, an old song Momma used to sing when he was sick. Mac curls up into himself a little more, breathing softly as he falls asleep again. 

* * *

The door slams open, and Jack flinches. They’re coming for them again, and he knows Mac won’t make it through this time. He turns toward the door, prepared to do whatever it takes to make sure they keep their attention on him, that maybe through some miracle they forget Mac exists. _ Like they’ll forget the kid shaking and coughing on the floor. _

He meets the eyes of the terrorists bursting through the door...except those aren’t terrorists. They’re U.S. Army. This is a rescue. 

“Dalton? MacGyver?” The man in the lead asks. 

“Yes!” Jack’s voice is hoarse, but he’s shouting with relief and joy and fear. “Mac’s here, he needs a medic, right now.”

The locks are broken off their cells, and Jack feels someone bending down beside him. “Damn, the kid’s not the only one who needs a medic stat.” Jack’s pretty sure that means his back’s infected. 

“Get them outta here. The others’ll finish the sweep.” Jack feels a couple of the men getting a grip under his arms. Another guy, a big burly fellow Jack’s seen around the base, is lifting Mac by himself, cradling the kid carefully to avoid hurting his back even more. He hears the man beside him speak into his comms. “Packages are secure, in need of medical airlift.” 

Jack’s whole body aches, and his back is on fire, but all he can think about is watching Mac’s chest rise and fall, making sure his kid is alive. 

They’re loaded into a waiting helicopter, and Jack can feel the rotors’ thrum in the shaking in his own body. He’s not cold, so why is he shaking? Maybe it’s that pesky fever. He looks to the side, but he can’t see Mac, and his whole body tenses up.  _ Where is he? Where’s Mac? What have they done with him? _ And then he sees someone setting the kid down on another gurney, and his heart rate slows as the rotors rise to a whining screech and lift them off the ground. 

Jack reaches across to Mac’s cot, and grabs the kid’s cold fingers in his own. Mac squeezes back, just a little, but it’s enough.  _ We’re okay. We survived. We’re going home. _


End file.
